Friday, January 30, 2009

Setting Goals and Tabbing the Portfolios

Since I have finished all of my reflection assignments, the next two things to do are to set goals and write an outline for the conference. Setting goals is something we do every term, but this term it is particularly important because my goals will be incorporated into the conference. I start my goal setting process by reading my comments. I highlight my strengths in one color and my weaknesses in another. Then, I set goals to further my strengths and improve upon my weaknesses. Some of the things I want to improve on based on my comments are taking initiative to take a leadership role during class and asking more questions during class to further the discussions.

We also have spent a lot of time in the past two days working on the outlines for our conferences. My outline consists of four topics that I want to cover during my conference. They are The Ways That I Learn Best, Areas Where I Have Shown Improvement, Areas Where I Can Still Improve and My Work Ethic. Each of these topics then has several examples. For the first section, Ways That I Learn Best, I chose three methods of learning that have been beneficial to me: collaborating with others, experimenting and making mistakes, and organizing information. Then I found examples of work in my portfolio that demonstrate how these methods have worked, such as a french quiz where I organized the vocab words by into colored flash cards by the gender of the words to help me study. After I chose all of my examples, I stuck a color coded post it note to each one so I will easily be able to find it during my conference. My portfolio looks pretty funny right now, because there are about thirty green, blue and purple post it notes sticking out of it from all sides!

Our conferences are going to have a lot of structure. We have written very specific outlines so we know exactly what to show our parents and so that we make sure that we remember to say everything we want to when the time comes. It is a challenge to get all of this work done, but I am glad that it is so organized because I am a bit intimidated to just talk about myself and my work all alone with my parents for a full hour and know that some of my friends feel the same way. Luckily we still have a week until the big night. I know that I will be rehearsing a lot!